"Sigh...if only the 007 games made now were this good..."

Goldeneye 007- the N64 game you're reading a review for now that has been hailed as one of, if not, the greatest FPS of all time. In November 2005, during Gamefaqs' countdown of the 10 best games ever, this game placed at number 7. (Impressive, and coincidental, huh?) And people still hail this game as one of the shooters out there. Is this game really worthy of all that praise?

Heck yes!

GAMEPLAYGameplay is almost flawless here. The game runs incrediably smooth. As everyone should know, this game is based on the 1995 movie "Goldeneye", and this game matches the game almost entirely. I could take points off for not following the movie entirely, but that would be unfair. If you can find any game that is EXACTLY like the movie it's made from, you let me know. The levels come in three modes: Agent, Secret Agent, and 00 Agent. (in order from easiest to hardest) Agent starts you off with just a few obvious objectives, like blowing something up, finding someone or something, or simply escaping from an area. As the difficulty increases, you get more objectives, such as finding a few extra things or getting through an area without an enemy sounding the alarm and alerting everyone of your presence. What makes this game extremely fun is the amount of weapons you can choose from. Although most of the time you'll just be using a KA-57, you PP7, a Destovel or a Klobb, you find much cooler weapons later on like an assault rifle, a grenade or rocket launcher, or in some cases, bombs. There are also two bonus levels at the end, and in those two levels, you can accquire a Moonraker laser or a Golden Gun.

Simply put, the range of weapons is the best in any game I've ever seen. But, there's just one more thing that this game has that I have not seen in any other mode. You can unlock the awesome "007" mode, in addition to the three difficulties already, and you can make any level on 007 mode as easy or hard as you like. In that mode, you can choose how much health an enemy has, how much damage an enemy can do, how quick their response time to your presence is, and how long it takes them to recover if they get shot. Finally, when some people think of James Bond, they could think of the exciting car chases in it. Well, in this game, forget the Aston Martin with an ejector seat; you're driving in a tank! One level involves Bond stealing a tank and driving around the streets of St. Petersburg in it, chasing after the bad guys. Just a warning: don't hurt any of the civilians stupid enough to be staying in the street when James Bond is driving a tank.

Now, onto difficulty. The Agent mode is ridiculously easy; the 00 Agent mode is ridiculously hard. (But of course, it's easy and hard mode. What else were you expecting?) On 007 mode, you have all the objectives of 00 Agent mode, you can just decide how easy or hard of an obstacle the enemies are. The difficulty to this game is really well balanced and it can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be if you decide to set up certain challenges for yourself.

Finally, one more cool thing included is the "Cheat Options". With these cheats that you can unlock by doing a certain mission on a certain difficulty in a certain amount of time, you can get things like Infinite Ammo, all guns, Invincibility, and many, many more! Although you won't be credited with completing a mission using these cheats, you can take them into the multiplayer. You can get infinite ammo in the multiplayer, along with paintball mode, and for humor, you can get DK mode, which is when your character's body is really small and has a huge head.

I found it very hard to get bored of this game. If you beat Agent mode, you still have secret agent. You beat secret agent, you got 00 Agent. You beat 00 Agent, you get 007 mode where you can make this game hard enough to make it last a long, long time. (Or you might have fun just toying around with the enemies' stats when you unlock this mode) The multiplayer mode makes it even harder to get bored of this game, but more on that later. For now, let's move on to...

GRAPHICSAmazing. Simply amazing. Quite possibly the best graphics I have ever seen on a Nintendo 64. I played the game before I watched the movie, and when I watched the movie, I was so shocked to see how much the levels in the game matched the movie. The Soviet Prison where Bond gets interrogated is almost identical in the game to how it was in the movie. The gas chamber Bond infiltrates in the beginning-almost identical. The Severnaya Computer Center-almost identical. The climactic fight on the satellite at the end-almost identical. The locations just looked spectacular in the game and looked just like they did in the movie.

But, does the game stop there with the extraordinary graphics? No, siree. The character design is what really made the game spectacular. Ironically, Bond is the one who looks the worst in the entire game. His face looks like he's constipated, but since this game is from his POV, you really don't see his face except in the mutliplayer. All of the other characters, on the other hand, look just like they did in the movie. Natalya Simnova looks great, as does General Ourumov and Xenia Onnatop. But they're no match for Trevelyan and Boris who look perfect. I was blown away with how Trevelyan looked; he looked JUST like he did in the movie. Not almost like he looked in the movie, not pretty close, but COMPLETELY like he looked in the movie. Even looking at the details, you can even see the scars on the right side of his face. (what I really can't understand is how they managed to make Trevelyan look as deformed as they did in the N64 version of TWINE) Boris also looks exactly like he did in the movie. Same glasses...same messy hair...same ugly shirt. The characters and levels look truly spectacular.

SOUND

Sound isn't as amazing as other parts of the game. but it certainly doesn't sink below average. Now don't worry-you've got the classic James Bond theme playing a lot during the game in different remixes, and that's always fun to hear when playing a 007 game. There's no voice acting, but there are occasional grunts when when someone gets killed or wounded during the game. The sound effects the guns make are pretty good and usually sound believable enough. They may get on your nerves after a while, but there's nothing wrong with them overall.

LENGTHThe length to Goldeneye 007 is almost perfect. This game has a lot of levels, but by playing them on the Agent mode, it will be really easy to beat them, making the game really short. 00 Agent will have a lot of side objectives you have to complete, not to mention a lot more restrictions on civilian casualties and how stealthy you are. That mode could make the game longer. I personally like playing medium mode when I first get the game. I don't know why, but I just really hate the easy modes on all games. Anyway, as I was saying, very good length here. It would still be long enough even without playing a harder mode, but if you decide to really give yourself a challenge, be prepared to spend a while on this game.

MULTIPLAYERNormally, I would have put the multiplayer under gameplay, but I thought I'd give it its own section in this review. This multiplayer is so unique; there is just something about it that sets it apart from all the other games. There are multiplayer modes named after James Bond movies, such as "The Man with the Golden Gun", "Licence to Kill", "Living Daylights" and "You Only Live Twice" . You can choose any multiplayer character that appears in the game...literally. I'm not saying your limited to major characters like Trevelyan or Bond, nor are you limited to more minor characters like Defense Minister Dimitri Mishkin or Valentin. I guess you could say you can play as "extras" in the multiplayer. Not only can you play as the main characters, but you can play as stock characters, including people named things like "Russian soldier" or "Prison Guard". Basically any character you encounter in the game you can play as in the multiplayer, including the random enemies you kill without care about 50 times a level.

The multiplayer in this game is awesome. The maps are usually pretty large (for an N64 game) and they're well thought out and there are lots of advantages and disadvantages to each map. Multiplayer is addicting and it never gets old, no matter how many times you play it.

PROS

+ Great graphics+ Character models look amazing+ Levels almost exactly match the movie scenes+ Wide variety of guns+ Awesome multiplayer+ Large amount of replay value+ Great overall gameplay+ Long length+ Cool missions that are more spy-like

CONS

-Uh...I dunno, some music isn't too memorable?

CLOSING NOTES

I can look at this game for a long time and try to find something wrong with it, but that would be really hard to do. This game's got great and varied difficulty with fun missions and a pretty good length. The wide variety of guns makes this game extremely fun, but these are especially put to use in the great multiplayer mode.

It's just so hard to find a serious flaw in this game that would keep it from being a perfect 10. I don't know of anyone who's played this game and hasn't liked it. I'll admit I don't really know FPS games too well, but I think this is pretty much as good as they get.